Daily Mail
April 5, 2015
A family doctor cut a hole in a Lynx shampoo bottle so he could film men using the showers in the gym.
Dr Omar Saadi Al-Atraqchi, 42, faces being struck off the medical register making him unable to continue working at the Custom House Surgery in Newham, East London as well as other surgeries in North London after he was found with the footage.
The urology specialist cut peepholes in Lynx bottles and emptied and dried them so he could hide his iPhone inside to film through the hole. He then slid the device under the partition of shower cubicles so he could secretly film men next door to him.
But Al-Atraqchi was caught out twice – once when a man noticed a glint of a camera through a bottle, and again when a fitness instructor became suspicious when he heard plastic being rustled and saw a Lynx bottle appear in his shower cubicle.
The doctor said he had set up the intricate device to ‘let off steam’ because of the pressure at work, and claimed he also felt isolated and confused about his sexuality.
Al-Atraqchi pleaded guilty to four counts of voyeurism and was fined £500, and ordered to pay costs of £85 and a victim surcharge of £25 when he appeared at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court.
He now faces a hearing to determine whether he will be struck off the medical register after a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service hearing in Manchester found him guilty of misconduct and told his ability to practise medicine had been impaired.
Two of the incidents took place at Pure Gym in Holloway. A spokesman for the gym said security had now been stepped up and Al-Atraqchi had been banned from all Pure Gyms for life.
In the first incident, in March last year, the Iraqi GP was found out when a naked gym user noticed a shower gel bottle being moved under the exposed area at the bottom of the cubicle and spotted a man’s hand moving the bottle around as if to re-position it. He also saw a hole in the top and a camera lens exposed in the hole.
He knocked loudly on the shower wall and shouted at the doctor who then pulled the shower gel bottle away and fled.